In a conversation with Francesca Gavin last month you said,
"I see the clips from TV as being as much my personal memories as the ones
from my own life, yet also having resonance with our collective national
consciousness." Much of your work blends footage you've shot yourself,
personalized footage shot by strangers, and the ersatz human experience offered
by TV and adverts. It assumes pop cultural references naturally interpolate
into one’s personal memories.

That quote was in reference to my editing style. I was explaining how my
editing derives from listening to hip hop and dance music, and music production
techniques. I look at the looping and sampling of sound, and then use those
methods to play with audio and video in a similar way.

When
I was a kid I would raid my brother’s room while he was out, and listen to his
tapes. He is over 10 years older than me and was heavily into the rave scene. I
distinctively remember nicking a rave tape from 92, so I was probably about
7-8. The stories about what he got up to were also influential.

The
rave scene is one pop-culture reference, among many, that reoccurs in my work.
I feel close to that youth/social movement and the music that spun out of it,
but I have always felt slightly outside of it too, which made it easy to
romanticize the whole thing until it became a part of what I did in my late
teens.

If
we think of rave culture as the last British subculture before the mass use of
the Internet, it may well be being revived to a certain degree, but in an age
where everything is consumed at a much faster pace, the cache of collective
knowledge is being recycled in imagery and reference and its continual reviving
from the archive of popular culture. As we live in an age where things are
increasingly fragmented, i am looking at the media as if it provides us a basic
image of our lives, (meanings, values) to form a totality to which these
fragments can be understood.

I
film a lot of my own footage, like my nieces playing, or record conversations
with my friends. In the same context, I collect the personalized footage shot
by strangers. They say that when you go to the cinema, you look for yourself in
films’ characters. I’ll often choose footage because it’s the type of banal
experiences that I have had, but with different characters. Within my work I
like to confuse and intertwine my footage and that taken from an advert or a
sitcom.

Pete [Morrow] used to hate it when people talked about an episode of Friends as if it was
something that happened in their life, or made an analogy, “it’s like in
Friends, when Joey said…’

It’s
not only playing out the personal through popular culture but, it’s also about
placing the personal experience within a wider cultural context. Within this
timeline of mass and subcultural references I can locate my personal experience
in a way that I hope other people relate to, in some ways autobiographical, but
in a way that is not overly personal, is not only about me but the viewer as
well.

That’s
what I mean by collective national consciousness - the personal and
non-personal becoming incorporated into one grand scheme. Relaying back an
image that feeds back on itself.

In relation to
cultivating grand schemes, when I think the analysis offered by Hebdige, and
other British cultural theorists working in the late 1970s to early 1990s, I
feel like they couldn't anticipate the kind of process of developing one’s own
adolescent identity within a massively saturated visual culture that
thematically reoccurs in your work.

I
feel that underground social movements like punk were described by Hebdige and
such as means of giving autonomy to the disenfranchised. I am working with my
friend Harry Burke on some text for his blog at the moment about this subject
and as he puts it, perhaps they were unable to predict the ‘potential attack on
the autonomous subject’.

If I
use an albeit shallow example of social change brought about by the fast pace
commercialization enabled by forces like the internet, I’d use the example of
how fashion now doesn’t have the capability to remain outside of the mainstream
for long. Historically - to wear a certain item of clothing could operates as a
code of defiance to the system and individuality. The pace of things means that
before you know it, it will be in every Topshop on every High Street in the
country. I could, but won’t, also go into the collapse of the record industry
how we knew, but that’s a whole other, much longer, discussion.

As
we evolve among signs, our identity becomes partly a process of managing the
signs we consume; the catalogues and gigabytes. It’s important to invent with
the ‘do it yourself’ mentality of the past, and to be aware that footage and
imagery are our readymades, and that this common imaginary is dictated by power
sources. It’s worth considering what the social functions, and how we produce
relationships with this material and within the world.

But
let’s also not forget feelings here - I think music, fashion, and a lot of
these images have and always and will always, makes people feel something, in
the same way breaking up with lover makes you feel something. There are
powerful sensory experiences to be found in cultural products, just as much as
they can be found in personal events.

Going
back to our discussion about pop references being absorbed into one’s life, a
lot of what my work is getting at is the feeling that emerges from the personal
colliding with these social symbols. As Harry would put it (perhaps better than
me), ‘maybe we can call it a narrative act of creating subjectivity through
personal encounters with shared visual symbols.’

My website is access point to an archive of finished works rather than a online viewing platform, it's why I have a password on the site. It also encourages people to email me and ask for the log-in details, which initiates one-on-one contact with people interested in my work, and encourages a dialogue. I also want people to come and see the work in a physical space, as I've set it up to be seen.

With the While It Lasts installation for Zabludowicz Collection, I created a cinematic environment that was impossible to replicate online. There are many reasons why I dislike showing my video work online, primarily because within the work, I try to set a rhythm or pace with fast edits which is totally lost if it stutters, the audio goes out of sync, stops half way through or if the video isn’t displayed properly, such as when it only half loads – all of which often happens. Bass sound is awful on tinny laptop speakers. And when the work is viewed in a channel surfing manner, and not for its full duration, it doesn’t receive the same element of consideration because the viewer doesn’t see them as they do in an exhibition context.

The immerse element of the work stems from the videos themselves (the changes of pace throughout which demands the attention of the viewer), the installations (creating a physical environment out of elements of the film which the viewer passes through) and the performance (where the audience sits in the middle of the performers and surround sound speakers). With so many artists whose work I've experienced first on the Internet, when I see it in real life, it tends to be bigger, louder or more interesting than I anticipated.

With the installed photographs, and other pieces at Zabludowicz, the installation felt akin to walking into a YouTube video. You also did a performance with Pete Morrow, which I missed. What happened?

We did an audio performance with me on a sampler, Pete on drums and 10 female performers. I put a lot of the sound bites (samples) through AbletonLive and added effects to them, so some were more unrecognizable than others.

Originally, we were going remix the exhibited film’s full soundtrack, but in the end, we focused on a specific section, beginning with the sound of children singing a Beach Boys’ song, a telephone conversation between a friend and myself, marching footsteps in heals (which is mixed in to the tempo of a Pussycat Dolls beat), and a girl dancing.

Within the film, all these elements play as a series of vignettes, or introductions to a moment in our transition towards adulthood. Whilst the film looks at this from the male and female perspective, the specific section we chose is about the feminine and becoming aware of your sexuality- although we chose this mainly because the sounds are better.

The performance was an ‘event’ after the advent, so to speak. The audience sat in the middle and the 10 female performers marched around them, acting like a metronome. When they fell into a rhythm and pace, we began to add other audio elements. Pete played along to their timing and I followed with the altered soundbites.

I’d been thinking a lot about remixing in the context of rhythms/cycles, patterns of social moments and events.

Age:

27

Location:

London

How long have you been working creatively with
technology? How did you start?

Always.
Technology is an integral part of making in one way or another. Whatever your
medium inevitably you’ll need to use programs like Photoshop.

Describe your experience with the tools you use. How
did you start using them?

Where did you go to school? What did you study?

I
studied fine art at Goldsmiths College and then fine art at the Royal Academy
of Arts in London both being interdisciplinary with no specialism. I have
always done a bit of everything. It’s the Goldsmiths way: jack-of-all-trades
and master of none.

What traditional media do you use, if any? Do you
think your work with traditional media relates to your work with
technology?

With
traditional, I am going to differentiate that between analogue and
digital. Video is the main part of my practice, and I’ve developed a language that mixes analogue and digital
found footage with mine, along with
brand and individual imagery.

My
process involves a lot of processing. One example of this is taking footage filmed on
my iPhone and processing it through VHS players, Aftereffects or DV capturing
devices to confuse the content and to make
it look like something from YouTube or an advert. This creates textures and
displacement. I am currently working on a web based project, whilst at the same time on some printed material using more
traditional processes like silk screening, trying to mirroring certain editing
techniques like repetition and rhythm.

Technology
is becoming more and more innate to grow up with. For example, my mum doesn’t
know how to turn a computer on, and I always finds it particularly humiliating
when I am leaning how to do something in After Effects from a 10 year old
American boy’s YouTube tutorial!

So in my
work, old and new media go full circle.

Are you involved in other creative or social
activities (i.e. music, writing, activism, community organizing)?

I am
about to attempt to writing something for a friend’s blog, although, in foresight, I should probably stick to Facebook and DJing.

What do you do for a living or what occupations have
you held previously? Do you think this work relates to your
art practice in a significant way?

Just
an artist. I worked at MOT International gallery after I graduated for
a couple of years where I learnt a lot, and in a post production
house in Soho. Although it was relevant, all that taught me was that I
didn’t want to
work in post production, it’s not autonomous enough.

Have you collaborated with anyone in the art
community on a project? With whom, and on what?

Oh
loads. I last worked with Ben Vickers on some HTML coding for my current show
with bubblybyte.org.
In the past I’ve worked with LuckyPDF, Harry Sanderson from Your Body is a
Temple and musician/music producer Pete Morrow. Next I want to work with Harry
Burke on some text.

Do you actively study art history?

I am
not ill informed, but I don’t actively study it. I have always been more
interested in music and TV.

Do you read art criticism, philosophy, or critical
theory? If so, which authors inspire you?

I am
currently reading a few thing; Rhythmanalysis by Henri Lefebvre- it’s a
critical

text
that analyses rhythms of urban spaces and the effects of those rhythms on the
inhabitants. Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus-a social critique
through art and music and SUBCULTURE AND THE MEANING OF STYLE about
subversion to normalcy.

I
have always been more interested in sociological texts; Giddens, Goffman, and
especially Bourdieu text Distinction: A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste, although
one art referencing book that I read which I think is reallyrelevant
is PostProduction by Nicolas Bourriaud. I don’t think this has
much to do with the way I make work, the work would be the same without
it.

Are there any issues around the production of, or the display/exhibition of new media art that you are
concerned about?